


Bound

by Ghelik



Series: The 100 Fics [48]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Future, F/M, FWP, Grounder Culture, No Plot, Wedding Fluff, Weddings, basically these two idiots getting married, just fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-04
Updated: 2018-07-04
Packaged: 2019-06-05 11:18:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15169571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ghelik/pseuds/Ghelik
Summary: Bellamy's wedding.





	Bound

There’s something incongruous about seeing Echo with flowers in her hair. The harshness of her face, the sharpness of her shoulders in conjunction with the softness of the flowers makes for a fascinating image.

Or maybe it’s not so much the flowers as the evening sun highlighting the edelweiss carefully woven into her mane, the intricate braids cascading about her shoulders, glinting off the small beads hidden among the leaves.

She’s dressed in her best pants and her favorite green tunic, both washed and mended with so much care, her boots cleaned, polished and waxed until the whole ensemble seems almost new. The black coat is one he had never seen before: a leather garment more suited for the mild temperatures of Eden than the heavy fur-covered jackets she wore in the lands of Azgeda when they first met. With silver and white thread, Echo has stitched a hundred tiny stars along the cuffs, collar, and edges of the coat, stars flowing in patterns down her back so that it looks like she’s wearing the night sky.

He recognizes the constellation on her right cuff: Equuleus, the one she could always locate from the window in their room on the Ring.

Bellamy feels a smile tugging at the corner of his lip.

He knows she stitched every single of those hundreds of tiny stars herself, and his heart warms remembering all the times she watched him embroidering old rags on the Ring. She would sit on the ground with her back to the wall; her sharp cat-like eyes fixed on the needle.

“Roan liked to embroider,” she told him once, voice distant, eyes extremely sad. “Said it calmed him down, let him think.”

“It reminds me of my mother,” he said. The first piece of information he had given her since they got to space. “She was a seamstress.”

Bellamy smiles at her, his eyes drinking her in like a starving man. He has to fight the urge to brush a rebellious strand of hair behind her ear.

They stand in the middle of the field they use as an open-air theater. Under his polished boot the wooden planks that make the stage. To his right a small table holding three bowls: one with water, one with dirt and the third empty. On his left, the benches filled with his friends and family. Just three days ago, he was sitting down there, between Clarke and Echo watching Madi and the rest of her class put on a representation of Snow White – Madi was the lead dwarf. Now, standing in front of the small crowd, he feels a thrill running up and down his spine. Echo smiles her shy, barely there little smile that seems always to take her by surprise, a blush high on her cheeks.

The warm air in the sun-bathed clearing is heavy with the fragrance of wildflowers and the low rise and fall of voices; a fresh spring breeze rustles the trees surrounding all but one side of the clearing, behind him the newly built huts stand as a testimony of everything they’ve accomplished in the past three years.

Kane and Indra step onto the stage and take their places between Bellamy, Echo and the table with the bowls. The chatter dies down into an expectant silence. He can’t take his eyes off Echo, the slight tremble of her slender hands, the elegant tilt of her neck, the curve of her mouth.

Kane starts with the Arker speech. Bellamy hadn’t witnessed all that many weddings during his years on the ark, but the words are familiar enough thanks to the movies they resemble the speeches given in the times before the bombs but aren’t quite the same.

Indra passes a lit candle to Echo. Kane asks for Bellamy’s knife. He unsheathes it, feeling slightly self-conscious.

It is an ugly thing: about twenty centimeters of repurposed steel with a crooked wooden handle and a nearly failed attempt at engraved letters near the hilt. Its main redeeming qualities being the sharpness of the blade and that it’s well balanced. This is the seventeenth of the twenty-four knives he forged over the last year and the best of the bunch. Years ago, when they were still on the Ring, Echo taught him to appreciate the delicate beauty of a well-crafted weapon, her calloused fingers always moving confidently over their slender bodies. She also attempted to teach him the fine art of forging he never managed to come anywhere close to her finesse.

This is now painfully obvious as Kane guides his hands so that the blade rests on top of the flame in Echo’s hand.

She looks down at the crooked letters. “You did this?” she asks in but a whisper.

Now it’s Indra the one delivering a speech.

“Az-tradition,” he mouths back.

He sees the breath catch in Echo’s throat, a tear desperately clinging to her eyelashes. He wants to brush it away, but he dares not to move for fear of breaking this perfect moment.

“Join hands” order Indra with her deep authoritarian voice. He raises his hand, palm up, and she lays hers on top of it, palm down. Indra steps forward, a thin strip of cloth in hand, winding it slowly around their hands, wrists, and forearms.

“So, where are you hiding yours?” he mumbles while Kane drones on.

Echo’s eyebrows arch. “I am not carrying any,” she answers. “It is tradition. Today it’s your job to protect me from harm.”

“You’re screwed.”

“I know.” She squeezes his hand. “I am going down with you.”

His heart contracts almost painfully.

Kane finishes whatever it was he was saying – Bellamy should probably pay more attention- and the crowd raises. Indra takes a step back. “It is time to say your vows,” announces the stern warrior. “Echo No-tagon kom Spacekru.”

She looks up at him.

“Bellamy,” Echo has a particular way of saying his name. It sounds like something more than it is, like something precious that needs to be handled with care. “You brighten my day; you make me want to be better. When I was your enemy, you saved my life. When the world was ending, you took me in. Even when you didn’t have any reason to show me kindness, when nobody would’ve blamed you for casting me to the darkness and fire, you took me to the stars. From you, I have learned the strength in kindness, the warmth of friendship. You have given me freedom and a voice I never knew I had. You are my partner and I, Echo kom Spacekru, born an azgeda no-tagon and raised to be your enemy, plead my life to you. I swear fealty and surrender myself into your hands. Ask of me what you want, it is yours. It will always be yours.” She swallows. “I love you from now until the third Praimfaya” the crowd chuckles at that, “and beyond.”

Indra turns to him. “Bellamy Blake kom Spacekru.”

He’s at a loss for words. In their bind, her fingers still shake slightly. His silence making her more and more nervous the longer it goes on.

“Echo. We met during war. We met in a cage, each set in their ways. And yet you helped me when you didn’t have to. And yes, I know we had a common enemy, but that’s not the point.” Her eyes flit around his face, an amused smile tugging at her lips. “The point is I’m not sure we would’ve been able to pull it off without you making that split second decision and helping me. And yes, we could’ve gone off on a better start. But you made me respect you despite my best efforts. And believe me, I tried.” she looks down, trying to hide the growing smile. “I tried so hard to hate you for what you were, for what you had done, even when your reasoning, your actions weren’t that different from mine. And then you saved my life again, later, much later on the Ring. It was the little details that made me fall in love with you: the fact that you would put up with Murphy when nobody else would; that you were able to make him smile when nothing else could. That you sat still and let Harper braid your hair, even though you hated every second of it. That, even though you were scared, you went out of the airlock to help Raven when she got stuck…” he can feel tears prickling behind his eyes. “It is the fact that you cried when Mufasa died, and that you sing off key at the top of your lungs, that you are caring and a good friend and a bad-ass teacher, that you never let Monty cheat at cards, all that and more is what made me fall in love with you. You dragged my sorry ass out of the darkest corner of space back into the light, and I would die for you.” He’s crying now, his chest tight with all the feelings that want to burst out of it. “I Bellamy Blake kom Spacekru, born son of Aurora Blake on the Ark’s Factory Station, will worship the ground you step on. I promise, never to let you down, and remind you every day that you are my partner, my equal. I swear to cherish you and be honest and fair and to love you from now until I die.”

Echo bows her head turns their joined hands to kiss his knuckles, and he curses the bind and the knife that keep him from taking her in his arms. Beside them, Kane and Indra move to the table. Indra takes the first bowl, her voice reverberating in the clearing: “May neither water” she sprinkles them with a few drops, “nor earth” she plashes them with a small handful of sand, “nor wind,” she blows on the sides of their faces “break your word.”

“Let blood and fire test the strength of your bond,” says Kane taking their bound hands and turning them ever so slightly so that the side of it looks up to him. A knife cuts a thin line from the side of Bellamy’s hand to Echo’s. It isn’t very deep, but it itches and blood wells up. Then he takes Bellamy’s knife – by now red-hot, and presses the blade to wound,

“They passed the test.” Indra’s monotone carries through the clearing. “Cheer, for we have a new match under the sun.”

Kane smiles. “You may kiss the bride.”

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading and commenting


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